


oh well, i guess we're gonna find out

by MagicalSpaceDragon



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Gen, i just wanted someone to hug roddy and tell him nyon wasnt his fault and then this happened, i refuse to explain myself.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-12 18:48:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28640274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagicalSpaceDragon/pseuds/MagicalSpaceDragon
Summary: She pulls him into her arms and keeps him there, like she thinks that the moment she lets go he'll crumble. Odds are, she's right.
Relationships: Hot Rod (Transformers) & Original Character(s)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 22





	oh well, i guess we're gonna find out

**Author's Note:**

> on one hand words cannot describe how weird i feel about posting oc fic especially this oc in particular
> 
> and on the other hand im an excellent writer and it would be cruel, and dare i say unethical, to deprive you all of something i liked writing so much
> 
> (thanks for the encouragement, tuna)

"Hot Rod," Dustcloud says, with more gentleness than he'll ever deserve. "Hot Rod, I'm _so sorry."_

She pulls him into her arms and keeps him there, like she thinks that the moment she lets go he'll crumble. Odds are, she's right.

He grieves. Primus knows he grieves.

* * *

Dustcloud is never far away, after that. She puts herself between him and— _the rest of—_ the Autobots, shouting them down every time they get to be too much.

He asks her point-blank, centuries in, why she's assigned herself as his protector. He's tired and angry and sick of people talking down to him. He's lashing out.

"Because," she says slowly, like she's drawing the words from somewhere far away, "It's _hard,_ and nobody understands." Then she shakes her helm, dissipating the out-of-place moment and the unsettling sense of scale, and smiles at him. "I guess I just feel like we can understand each other."

He asks her what the hell she's talking about. She changes the subject.

She keeps changing the subject.

* * *

"Where are you from?" Hot Rod asks for the first and only time. _Iacon,_ Dustcloud tells him, grinning.

"Where are you from?" some plucked-right-from-the-middle-castes bastard snarls at her, hating the irreverent way she laughs. _Kaon,_ she taunts, puffing out her chest and the Autobrand on it, _you got a problem?_

 _Praxus,_ she says, flashing the kibble on her back that from the right angle _almost_ resembles doorwings, with a cheeky smile that _dares_ them to ask questions.

 _Vos,_ she sing-songs, dangling from the ceiling by the graspers on her feet.

Battle after battle, all listed off carelessly, as if she's an MTO, as if any of those battles happened before the two of them met, as if Hot Rod isn't right there and can't hear her change it every time, as if he doesn't see her winking at him.

 _Nyon,_ she says only once, to a medic, moments after Hot Rod wakes up and moments before he's about to tell them he's awake. They've gotta sedate him more than that, his frame burns through it too fast, and through painkillers even faster. _I'm from Nyon,_ she pleads, _he's all I have left._ She's not laughing. There's no smile in her voice. She's still lying, and for the first time in a while, Hot Rod wonders _why._

* * *

"Have we met before?" Dustcloud asks, wearing an unreadable expression as she squints at the psychiatrist-bot who's been making his rounds evaluating (interrogating) the soldiers on-base.

"You know," the mech says, weirdly surprised, "I don't believe we have?"

"Huh," she says.

* * *

"I've met him before," she tells Hot Rod later. She's not laughing. She doesn't explain.

* * *

"No, no, the Necrobot is _definitely_ real," a possibly-overcharged Dustcloud insists. "Listen, I will bet you all of the shanix I am carrying, he is real and I could take him in a fight."

"Why would you try to take him in a _fight?"_ Hot Rod laughs, gently snatching the foul-smelling fuel out of her hand before she can spill it with an overly-emphatic gesture.

"Because death is a glitch and a coward," she says authoritatively. "And the Necrobot is a _total_ nerd. Trust me."

* * *

Most mechs… most mechs, he can tell, forget about Nyon most of the time. If it's not useful or convenient information, who gives a damn, right? If nobody's playing another fun round of 'see how many of Hot Rod's failures you can list off the top of your head', then what does it matter?

Dustcloud's different. She remembers. Of all the Autobots—of all the mechs, _period—_ he met in the aftermath, she was the only one who seemed to understand what he had lost. She hadn't blamed him or praised him. She hadn't tried to derive some kind of… _meaningful observation_ from his suffering.

"You should have never had to make that choice," she'd said. Or, well, something like it. He's paraphrasing. His memory of back then always feels hazy and unreal, like if it weren't for the recharge terrors he could almost convince himself it all happened to someone else. "It wasn't fair. It's not your fault."

She doesn't bring Nyon up herself, but he thinks she must somehow recognize it in his optics when it's haunting him. She'll prompt him with a few words and that's all it ever seems to take before it spills out of him, all the agony and guilt.

"It's not your fault," she says yet again, stroking his helm in a way that's long since become synonymous with _safety._ "You did everything in your power, I _know_ you did."

"It wasn't _enough,"_ he sobs like he always does. It was a squad, this time, a mission too few of them made it back from, but that wound's still far too fresh to think about so for now he's trying to keep himself together by going through old, familiar motions. Dustcloud lets him get away with it.

"I know," she says. "It's not fair. It was never fair."

* * *

The Autobots promise protection and aid to a species of organics. By the time they get there, the Decepticons have bombarded the planet from orbit. There's nothing left.

Hot Rod catches Dustcloud trying to sneak into a shuttle.

He crosses his arms and glares at her with narrowed optics. Normally, he'd be all for doing something crazy, impulsive, and _extremely_ against regulations, but the look of horrified guilt on her face is one step too far for him to brush off. "Start talking."

"I," she says, holding her hands up in way too conciliatory a pose, with way too desperate a smile. "Well, you see, I—"

"Cut the slag. I can tell when you're lying to me."

The smile drops. A few seconds later, her hands follow.

"I'm going planetside," she admits weakly. "I need to see it for myself."

Sounds like a stupid, impulsive plan that's not going to end well for anybody. "I'm going with you."

Her shoulders slump in relief. "Okay."

She's silent on the way down. Hot Rod doesn't ask. 

* * *

"I'm not from Cybertron," Dustcloud says abruptly. He turns to stare at her, but her optics stay fixed on the dead, barren horizon.

Hot Rod studies her. It takes a long time to wrack his mind for the right information, old half-remembered stuff that he never cared too much about. "One of the colonies?"

"Something like that," she says. So, _no,_ not one of the colonies. Something weirder.

The wind moans over the dead, cracked earth, collecting in the hollows of glassy craters like slow-cooling slag. It stirs up little clouds of dust that glimmer not-quite-gold in the sunlight beating down on them from a cloudless sky. She picked her name from a poem, she's told him. The dust thrown up by offroading wheels, the way when the weather's right it lingers a bit after a mech has passed through. The hope, she says, that comes from knowing there's someone else out there with you, close enough for you to catch up with them if you floor it. The hope that comes from knowing you're not alone.

"It was destroyed like this," Dustcloud says. "Orbital bombardment."

He takes her hand. She squeezes it tight enough that their plating creaks.

"We fled when it had already started. There was no going back." She offlines her optics. "I… I wanted to see what it must have looked like, after."

He remembers what it had looked like when the slag had finally cooled. He could do without the image captures seared into his memory, but… if he'd just run and never looked back… if he hadn't stayed and tried to pry whoever and whatever he could out of the edges of the destruction…

"It wasn't your fault," Hot Rod says.

Dustcloud throws her head back and laughs. It's the laugh that always sets his plating on edge, like she's in on a joke no one else is. "You don't know that."

"I know you," he says. "You wouldn't wish this on anyone."

"You _don't_ know me," she spits, grinning at him with bared teeth and not taking her hand out of his. "You have no idea what I'm capable of. I lie about _everything."_

"You've never lied to me about how you feel," he says, surprising himself with his certainty. "Whatever happened, I know you did everything you could. It's not your fault."

She still doesn't pull her hand away. "It was."

"It's _not your fault,"_ he repeats stubbornly. And then, on a hunch, "You shouldn't have had to make that choice."

The grin freezes. He grips her hand tighter.

"I guess not," she says, looking away to hide the expression creeping onto her face now. He lets her get away with it.

**Author's Note:**

> :^)


End file.
